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Song of the Day: Ren – Bitter Sweet Symphony (Live)

Posted on
10 Sep 2024
by
Paul

As a follow up to yesterday’s post featuring Spaceface’s version of “Bittersweet Symphony”, let’s look at another unique interpretation of the song, this one not quite a cover, but it’s own thing entirely.

Welsh rapper Ren Gill (or just Ren as he’s better known) released his own, updated version of The Verve’s hit early last year, using the main hook of the song and the line “Trying to make ends meet/You’re a slave to the money, then you die” as a jumping off point for his own ruminations on working class life in Britain.

And though he raps about “working class casualties” sleeping rough and mothers pushing their baby prams to the pub to drown away their sorrows, it’s not all doom and gloom, with Ren also finding a certain beauty in it all at the same time, noting, “This it the Britain I know, this is the Britain I love/There’s poetry inside this city if you listen enough.” This recently released live version, a more stripped down performance alongside a string quartet, sees Ren singing a snippet of the chorus from The Verve’s original at the end, adding a nice coda to end it all off.

PrevPreviousSong of the Day: Spaceface – Bittersweet Symphony
NextSong of the Day: Palomino Blond – LeftNext

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